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Forum:Rule, Style, and Canon Update
I feel as if perhaps the rules and desired style (as discussed prior to the Reboot) of Tranquility Lane are perhaps unclear. I have messaged the other administrators to organize a discussion on the subject of reorganizing and rewriting the rules for the sake of clarity and ease of moderation. This is not going to result in another reboot, any article that is not in compliance with any rules changes will have ample opportunity to make necessary changes. If you have any suggestions or concerns, please post a comment. I'd say all that needs to be clarified is that the rules are mutable in some cases, as they're there to ensure a certain quality and style befitting a post-apocalyptic setting, rather than what would be exceptionally cool to have running around to compete with the Brotherhood of Steel, or the NCR or the Enclave, or a Japanese or Chinese or French or Canadian version of those groups. The games themselves are about how one exceptional individual can effect massive changes. I suppose it should also be said that Tranquility Lane is not about creating such exceptional individuals and groups, but rather about creating a setting to support the possibility of those people and groups wanting to effect change, or facilitating them, rather than being some large, beastly organisation that has long ago effected such a change and is trying to rebuild things on a nationwide scale or make massive conquests over its neighbours. //--''Run4My Talk'' 13:19, September 16, 2011 (UTC) So then it should be made clear that the wiki is not a clearing house for would-be game protagonists, groups that are well on their way towards fixing huge swaths of the world, waging battles of a Pre-War caliber (fleets of vehicles, superweapons, hundreds of troops or more, etc.), or groups and characters causing changes to canon groups and characters. What do you think of putting a ban on groups and large communities in canon locations? For example, you could still make a character from the NCR or Megaton, but not a group that clashes with the Great Khans or the Outcasts; you could make a small town set within the greater ruins of the Boneyard or a shop in New Reno, but not a wasteland metropolis that could supersede New Vegas between it and Shady Sands. It's recently come to my attention that some people don't quite understand what is meant by a large militarized faction. This is a (poorly written) response I gave to a question regarding the concept: Someone want to organize that tangle of thoughts into something more coherent? I briefly got to talk to C4 the other day about this topic and he said that if we want more activity we should just let people do whatever they want. That would certainly work, but I'm not of the opinion that more is better simply by virtue of quantity. I'd like a more active userbase, certainly; but you all know how picky I am. This is an open question to the users of TL, what would be your ideal ruleset and ideal accepted canon? I read your question and have a few suggestions. First, you could ease the restrictions on populations, allowing users to come up with populations going into the tens of thousands (considering it has been 200 years), as long as they can give a good reason for such. Example being, a city is built along the Mississppi around 2090, and has a population of 10,000 by 2281. The city grew as a combined result of working water purification centers, protection by the militia, and a strong food supply. Additionally, the city attracted new residents because it sat along an important trade route, providing traders with a place to rest and set up business. It is well defended, has a good food source, and clean water, all of which attract survivors looking to to rebuild society. Crime is of course factored in. The crime rate is huge, considering that many people, destatute and without a place to call their own, prey on the traders that bring in large sums of money. Many leave, but the few the stay use their wealth to fund a security force, which combats crime quite effectively. With a security force and a strong military force (not overwhelmingly large), more and people are drawn to the city, bringing a variety of skills and trades. With a large and stable society, the city is able to grow, and by the 2250s, has rebuilt many of the buildings and facilities using the wealth generated over the years. This city becomes one of the regional powers on the Mississippi, and seems to be ready to expand, and search for other areas to spread it's influence, with the intention of securing more lands to sustain itself. This is the first sign of nation-building. First the survivors look for greener pastures, then they begin to rebuild, followed by their need for security, they establish a crime fighting force which soon grows into a militia as the population grows drawn by the opprutunity to become something (kinda like the American Dream with deathclaws). Once the settlement has money, it can begin looking to rebuild the more important areas of it's infustructure using the talents of people drawn to the city. As the quality of life begins to grow, so too will the population, wealth generated, and security. Finally, when they have secured their assets at home, they can begin looking abroad to continue the cycle. If you think I went in circles, sorry. This paragraph is the shortened version. This proposal will ultimately lead to the creation of states, but only thoses smart enough to see that will take shot, and those people will hopefully be the good writers. Anyway, that's my answer to your question, will at least part of it. I hope this helps. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know. My problem with such high populations is that we would effectively have to let everyone make them, and if you give it enough thought you can come up with a justification to put a large community anywhere. We would inevitably have enormous communities in relatively close proximity of each other. If we create some kind of rule requiring some arbitrary distance between them, we've basically gotten rid of the rule regarding people claiming huge swathes of land. If we don't, then certain areas start resembling their pre-war selves; or become even more populous than their pre-war selves in the case of rural areas hosting multiple five-figure population centers. ---- I'd argue that V has a generally good point about population up until the issue regarding the military force. I've wondered how these societies can maintain high quality weapons in high amounts. Of course americans have a lot of guns, but militaries are more likely to be rag-tag than anything else. I like how the wiki and Fallout Canon has kept military forces limited outside the NCR and BoS and Enclave. The issue regarding populations: I think it is possible to have larger populations but not necessarily in the cities- the cities were bombed and irradiated...there shouldn't be many people living in them at all and their infrastructure was destroyed... and once that problem exists--then the justification that the people could repurpose large structures disappears. Of course, many could live in suburbs, so there is a workaround, but there's less heavy utility infrastructure in the suburbs. Rebuilding infrastructure is a vast undertaking that requires many of the talents of a modern industrial society. The Fallout universe lacks factories to process raw metals--the quality of any of their metals will be questionable at best. It likely will be better than China's 1959 backyard furnaces smelting metals, and Fallout does have superscience, but I don't see assembly lines making automobiles or mass production at all. I see some tinkers making a few, and I see some hodgepodge frankestein-like cars potentially being produced in masses if someone manages to dig things out of a junkyard, but the work to repurpose those things will require a lot of labor that should be farming. TLDR: I agree that populations in the Fallout Universe seem a bit under-estimated. It makes sense to have a former city of 1 million shrunk to 10,000 or at most 40,000. For purposes of the wiki, however, it might make sense to split many cities into several smaller cities. It is by no means certain that a whole city will be united under one government. There may be several on different sides of the irradiated wasteland- all of which have their own government. That seems to reflect the situation in Fallout: NV. NV appears to have around 1500 characters (estimate) on-screen in the area of Las Vegas--one city. Taking the characters as representational- there are probably 4,500 people here... but for purposes of out-of-game logic to support those three casinos one could assume about 10,000 to 40,000 in the area...and that's one of the better-recovered areas of the wasteland--almost no areas save the Core Region should have higher populations. That could be a guidepost. ~LD~ 16:21, October 2, 2011 (UTC) That I can agree with. As for military forces, it is entirely possible, that so long as the weapons in use aren't of high quality (M-14s, FN FALs, miniguns, energy weapons), it is entirely possible for them to maintain a military. It can be liken to how the early Americans maintained militias that handled their own equipment and armorments, without the need for outside assistence, or how ancient nations held their men responisble for taking care of their own weapons. As the amount of wealth a city has begins to increase, they can then afford to better equip their people, and the people gain skill in maintaining these weapons, which allows them to become excellent weapon makers. As the need for something increases, people will begin to learn the skills needed to fill the need, despite the lack of prior knowledge. This does not mean that people will begin to figure out how to bring a nuclear power plant back online though, there are some limits to what one can do. But as I mentioned before, with enough effort, people can learn how to make a decent weapon, and if they are truely talented, they could perhaps make an energy weapon from copper wiring, makeshift energy cells, and lens they found throughout the wasteland. There is no limit to what people can do in dire straights, so one must remain open to the possiblity for people to make cars out of old junk in a scrapyard. Car buffs can it, so why can't a civilization far more advanced than our own do it either? As per request by OvaltinePatrol to copy some of the discussion here, here's a small discussion on Game Content and a Quest section. Game Content could possibly be allowed on the wiki in a '''spoilered '''quests section. That way the fanfiction authors wouldn't be bothered by the mechanics and the other readers of the wiki (Play by posters, etc.) could still gather ideas from the quests. 4. "Quests" could be a good way to encourage people on the site to add to others' articles. "Quest" edits may be less controversial than changes to the history of a location, for example. "Quests" provide a good opportunity for collaboration because they are modular--like OP's Bird Man Races article provided a good opportunity for cooperation. 5. It appears that the main reason for the restriction on Game Mechanics is to prevent people creating characters that can attack other characters, powergaming, etc. The way I present it, no character has a set statistic-- I present things as if a GM was leading a game in the world and the GM's players had to overcome a challenge. 6. The Quests really appear to help sketch out a city--I can much more easily see inter-relationships and I can more easily invent needed concepts by using the Quests to tie things together. I'm going to remain firm on population size for now, not because I necessarily think large populations would be impossible; but as an acceptable break from realism and extrapolation in the name of leaving real estate open to authors. As for anything else, I'm at the point where I'm prepared to conditionally allow it; that condition being the author(s) secure permission from an administrator. Crazy or rarefied concepts would probably require collaboration with an administrator to keep it from going overboard. Theoretically, if the author is decent and prepared to work within bounds, I'd be willing to forgo many rules, perhaps even the ban on aliens.--OvaltinePatrol 09:48, January 18, 2012 (UTC) I think I would also like to change the rule regarding categories for users. There should probably be a minimum number of complete articles one should have before you can create a category for your username. I'm thinking 5.